GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 269482
Allow to search & merge duplicated contacts
Last modified: 2021-05-19 11:45:11 UTC
Description of Problem: If there is an addressbook with duplicated entries, would be nice to allow to find and merge the duplicated entries automatically.
*** bug 257790 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 218468 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Requested in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/30878 too.
What would be really good is if two contacts could be merged with a keystroke (as possible on a Mac). It is a difficult problem to thoroughly detect duplicates, and this provides an easy fall-back if automatic detection fails (or is not trusted). Use cases: 1) Add a phone number on mobile; add an address on Evolution; sync; the new person is now in two places on each device. Use button or keyboard shortcut to merge these two items when both highlighted. 2) Same as 1) but if two fields are identical, e.g. if both had phone number, and one had address, then the resulting merged contact would NOT have two phone number fields. This seems obvious, but Macs cock this up Macs also add spare information into the notes field.
Is this related to bug#211082?
I don't believe it is related. I think what needs to occur is an item on a right click menu called "Merge With..." which allows you to select another address book entry and merge the two. Or if you select two entries the right click entry could be reworded to "Merge Selected Contacts"
Bumping version to a stable release.
Alan, I wonder if users would be able to find a feature that only pops up when two or more contacts are selected. Might I suggest that a "Delete Duplicate Contacts" tool be entered into the Actions menu instead? It could guide users through all the potentials, and then eliminate/merge as needed...
I agree this is import. I just ran an "import" function only to find with great disappointment that about 100 of my contacts had now been duplicated and there was no easy way to do it. It would also seem like an obvious feature for an import tool-- if an identical entry already exists-- don't add it again!
It seems that a plugin exists at http://www.gagniard.org/gilles/wiki/wakka.php?wiki=EvolutionContactMerge and a script to *remove* (not merge) duplicate contacts (by name only). The former might be a good addition to default setup.
The latter script is available at http://zzamboni.org/brt/2006/07/09/eliminating-duplicate-contacts-in-evolution-howto/index.html
related bugs - bug 548610, bug 549609
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